New England American Studies Association

Annual Conference

2024 Conference Schedule

Friday, June 21, 2024: 

8:30-9:00: Registration & Coffee

9:00-10:30: Concurrent Panels

Reading and Writing Place

  • Lee Nevitt, Tufts University, “Queer Experimentations in 19th-Century American Regional Literature”
  • Yolanda Mackey, Penn State, “Mapping the Long Negro or ‘Harlem’ Renaissance in the Literary Imaginary”
  • Andrew Suárez, Harvard University, “Una Nueva Genealogía: Revisiting Place in 20th Century Chicana Literature”

CHAIR: Jonathan Fitzgerald, Regis College

Colonial Crossroads

  • Charline Jao, Cornell, “Flowers of the Sea: Marine Specimens at the Anti-Slavery Bazaar”
  • Julia K. Woodward, Boston College, “Multiple Multiplicities: Créolité and Cultural Crossroads in Caribbean Fiction”
  • Katharina Weygold, Brown University, “African American Women and Haiti During the U.S. Occupation of Haiti, 1915 – 1934”
  • Edward Hunt, Regis College, “Strategic Bridge? The Compact States as a Region in the American Empire”

CHAIR: Hannah Haynes, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts

Photography in the New England Region

  • Marina Wells, New Bedford Whaling Museum, “A Maritime Backdrop: Early Photography Studios in New Bedford”
  • Jesse Dritz, Boston University, “‘There’s More Water Out There Than I Can Drink’: Reframing the Maine Coast in Salt Magazine”
  • Maddie Webster, City of Boston, “Urban Renewal Photography and Black Homeownership Realities”
  • Lauren Graves, Boston Athenaeum, “Where’s Boston?: Constantine Manos’s Bostonians”

CHAIR: Alisa Prince, Boston University

10:45 – 12:15: Concurrent Panels

Revisiting Texas

  • Jonathan Silverman, UMass Lowell, “Race and Races: Life at Manor Downs”
  • Dr. Dwonna Naomi Goldstone, Texas State University, “Black & Female & Liberal in Texas”
  • Joel Huerta, University of Illinois Chicago, “Camelia La Tejana: A Look Back, Fifty Years Later”

CHAIR: Nicholas Bloom, Harvard University

Reconsidering New England

  • Mary Renda, Mount Holyoke College, “To Conquer Outlying Regions: The Pursuit of Women’s Higher Education in New England”
  • Hwayoung Yi, Texas A&M University, “Rethinking Jewett’s New England Regionalism”
  • Olivia R. Jacobs, Boston University, “Appalachian Temporal Regionalism: New England’s Aesthetic Hallucination”
  • Rajender Kaur, William Paterson University, “Revisioning the Regional: New England and Indian Ocean Worlds”

CHAIR: Lydia Ciollo, Fairfield University

Confronting Colonial Regionality

  • Morgan Ridgway, Harvard University, “Toward Unknowing: Non-recognition, Lenape Insistence, and Troubled Geographies”
  • Kristen Iemma, Brown University, “Records Confronting Borders: Archival Sovereignty in Twentieth Century U.S. Empire”
  • Christopher Slaby, William & Mary, “Region in U.S. History and the People of the Waters That are Never Still: Mohican Homelands, the ‘Hudson’ River, and the Messiness of Place”
  • Olivia Anne Lafferty, Brown, “Theorizing a Filipinx American Transpacific in the Wake of the Galleon Trade”

CHAIR: Megan McNamara, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

12:15 – 1:00: Lunch

1:00 – 2:30: Keynote, Joseph Rezek, Boston University

“The Captain and the Codex: John Smith’s Generall Historie of Virginia and the Transformation of Pocahontas”

2:45 – 4:15: Concurrent Panels

Material Cultures of/and Place

  • Chloe Chapin, Harvard University, “Whiteness, Materialism, and American Regional Identity”
  • Victoria Oliviero, Boston College, “New England Egyptomania: Boston’s Elite and Their Travels”
  • Astrid Tvetenstrand, Boston Athenaeum, “From Canton to Newport: Kingscote, Chinese Art, and the Transnational Circulation of American Taste”

CHAIR: Charles Park, Berkshire Community College

Tourism & Conservation

  • Anne Boyd, Boston University, “Driving Davis Out West: The Jefferson Davis Highway’s Westward Expansion in 1940s California”
  • Ella Howard, Wentworth Institute of Technology, “Regionalism and Historic Preservation Districts”
  • Dan McKanan, Harvard Divinity School, “Conservation, New England Style”

CHAIR: Marina Wells, New Bedford Whaling Museum

Rural, Urban, and In Between 

  • David Faflik, University of Rhode Island, “Back of the Bus: Race and the Integration of Red Sox Nation”
  • Jack Carey, University of Alabama, “Odd Couples: Notes on Teaching Comparative Regionalism in ‘the Southern Trough’”
  • Brian Murphy, Williams College, “From Nowhere: A Midwestern Memoir”

CHAIR: Ethan Goodnight, Harvard University

4:30 – 6:00: Reception, hosted by Harvard’s American Studies Program

Saturday, June 22, 2024

9:00-10:30: Concurrent Panels

Space and Place, Visualized

  • Justin Wolff, University of Maine, “Here, There, Everywhere: Picturing Catastrophe Across Time and Space”
  • Jarkko Tanninen, University of Nottingham, “Out of the Boondocks: (Re)Performing Regional Imaginaries in Contemporary American Photography”
  • James Emmett Ryan, Auburn University, “New Orleans Cinema and Social Change, 1940-1970”

CHAIR: Betsy Walters, Boston University

Locating the Native Great Lakes and the Midwestern Anti-Region

  • Dylan Nelson, Harvard University, “Regions, Territories, and Homelands: The Longue Durée and Indigenous Trajectories in the Great Lakes”
  • Kabl Wilkerson, Harvard University, “Regionalism and the Question of Great Lakes Indian Removal: Region as Method and Analytic”
  • Saffron Sener, Harvard University, “Spectral ‘Superstition:’ Politics, Gender, and the Pursuit of Power in the Early Midwest”

CHAIR: Carolyn Parker-Fairbain, Boston University

Diaspora and Immigration

  • Amanda Rivera, Yale, “Archival Ambivalences: The Colonial Limitations and Ethnographic Potentials of Puerto Rican Diaspora Archives in Southern Connecticut”
  • Hannah Haynes and Izzy Beauchamp, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, “Immigration in the Berkshires: Evaluating Berkshire County as a Context of Reception for New Migrants”
  • Walter E. Suarez Becerra, Independent Scholar, “Peruvians in the United States: Tracing Diaspora and Incorporation”

CHAIR: Andrew Suárez, Harvard University

10:45 – 12:15: Concurrent Panels

Destabilizing Boundaries, Remaking Regions: Pedagogical and Artistic Projects from the Vermont-Quebec Borderland

  • Amy Howe, Champlain College
  • Gene Pendon, artist
  • Melissa Proietti, Champlain, Montreal Campus
  • Weiling Deng, Champlain College

Regional Consumables

  • Rachel Ciampoli, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “‘The Indigenous Posey of the Soil’: Eastman Johnson’s Maple Sugar Paintings and the Aesthetics of Elision”
  • Andrew Green Hannon, PhD from Yale, Panama Rose’s The Hashish Cookbook: Authenticity and Authorship from Beat Morocco to the Hip Lower East Side
  • Claire Bunschoten, Boston University, “‘What Northern Hands Made’: Crafting Vanilla Bean Terroir and Fetishizing Place”

CHAIR: AnnMarie DeMichiel, The University of Rhode Island

Mapping Indigenous Worcester, A Film Screening and Conversation 

  • Colin Novick, Greater Worcester Land Trust
  • Gwenn Miller, College of the Holy Cross
  • Sarah Luria, College of the Holy Cross

12:30 – 2:00: Awards Lunch

2024 Lodging, Dining, and Amusements

The 2024 Conference will be held at the Barker Center at Harvard University, located at 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Accessibility:

The Barker Center has a wheelchair accessible ramp at the front entrance, and is accessible via a parking lot on the Prescott Street entrance. The elevator is to the left of the main entrance, and accesses each floor. There is a single stall, gender neutral restroom on the fourth floor. 

If you have any questions, concerns, or needs in regards to accessibility, please feel free to reach out to neasacouncil@gmail.com.

Nearby Accommodations:

Sheraton Commander Hotel: It’s a Sheraton/Marriott, $$$

Hotel 1868: Boutique hotel, slightly farther away from campus, $-$$

Cambria Hotel Boston Somerville: Pretty standard hotel, $-$$

Porter Square Hotel: Standard hotel, nice, farther away from campus, $$

Irving House at Harvard: Bed and breakfast, $$-$$$

Prentiss House: Inn, availability seems limited

Harvard Square Hotel: “Relax in Our Stylish Boutique Hotel in Harvard Square,” $$$

Charles hotel: “Ivy League Indulgence,” $$$

Hotel Veritas: “Elegance meets comfort,” $$$

DoubleTree Suites

Dining:

Cambridge Common Restaurant: north of Harvard

“Relaxed, welcoming hangout with many draft beer choices & nightly live music shows,” $$

Toscano Harvard Square: Italian cuisine

“Tuscan specialties including pasta, pizza & risotto in a rustic, refined setting,” $$$

Harvest: American cuisine

“Welcoming mainstay for contemporary New England seasonal dishes; garden courtyard,” $$$

Source restaurants: pizza, small plates

“Pizzas & light fare doled out in a redbrick venue that has an industrial-style dining room & a bar,” $$

Russell House Tavern: American cuisine

“Upscale New American fare, craft cocktails & microbrews are on offer at this chic gathering spot,” $$

The Hourly Oyster House: seafood

“Cozy but airy spot serving seafood, from raw bar options to lobsters, plus eclectic wines & spirits,” $$

Red House restaurant: seafood

“Charming, long-running venue for shareable plates & cocktails, plus a patio with weekly live music,” $$$

Grendel’s Den Restaurant and Bar:

“Staple pub that’s popular with students for beer selection, happy-hour bar bites & a patio,” $

Le’s Vietnamese Restaurant: Vietnamese cuisine

“Local mini-chain eatery offering Vietnamese noodle soups (pho) & entrees in a cheerful setting,” $

Coffee:

Faro café: coffee, live music

Blue Bottle Coffee: “Trendy chain offering upscale coffee drinks & pastries, plus beans & brewing equipment,” $$

Tatte Bakery & Café: Harvard Square, $$

Café Gato Rojo: “Coffee, tea, hot chocolate pastries, open based on the school season,” $

Pavement Coffee House: “High-end coffee, espresso drinks & tea, baked goods, relaxed coffee shop,” $$

Bluestone Lane Harvard Square Café: $$

Peet’s Coffee: $

Starbucks: north and south of Harvard

Blank Street Coffee: $

Dudley Cafe – Cambridge: north of Harvard

Other things to do:

The Royall House and Slave Quarters Museum, Medford, MA

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

African American Meeting House, Boston

Boston Athenaeum, Boston

2024 Call for Papers

The New England American Studies Association is currently seeking submissions for our Summer 2024 conference “Revisiting Region: Locating the “Where” in American Studies” to be held at Harvard University, June 21-22, 2024.

In a moment of political polarization, environmental crisis, and educational censorship, the serious study of region as a cultural, social, and academic tool is of pivotal importance for building and disrupting ideas of identity and collectivity. We seek submissions that explore the role of region(s) within the national project, within our field of study, and within the popular imagination. Put simply, we invite you to join us as we revisit region.

American Studies as a field grapples with regional and hemispheric differences and continuities that shape and disrupt ideas of “the nation.” Regions are imagined and reimagined in ways that are simultaneously expansive, limiting, stereotypical, innovative, local, national, and global. In our efforts to revisit region, we ask: What role does region play in American studies now? Is there such a thing as non-regional American Studies? What are the important conversations in studies of New England, the mid-Atlantic, the Midwest, the South, the West, hemispheric American settings such as the islands of Hawaii or the Caribbean, and beyond? How has the idea of region been used politically, culturally, and academically, and to what ends? As region was, and continues to be, an important foundation for how American Studies is taught, studied, and even experienced, this conference welcomes proposals that focus on American Studies topics from all avenues of regional studies, including but not limited to:

  • Regional Imaginaries
  • Region-less and Outsider-ness in America
  • Current American Regionalism as Imperial and Colonial Inventions
  • Indigenous Geographies – Political, Affective, and/or Material 
  • Region(s) in Conflict 
  • The United States and Global Regions
  • Diaspora, Movement, and Migration Across Borders
  • Racialized, Gendered, and Classed Ideas of Region  
  • Rethinking New England 
  • The South in the North
  • Midwestern Cosmopolitanism
  • Ocean Studies of the Atlantic and the Pacific
  • Archipelagic Americanism/Americans 
  • Regionalist Art, Literature, Music, etc.
  • Regional Studies, American Studies, and Universities 
  • Travel and Tourism Within and Across Regions
  • Political Polarization Across Regional Lines 

We welcome papers on theoretical interventions, creative approaches, personal testimonies, and methodological reflections, as well as traditional papers of 15-20 minutes. We encourage pedagogical explorations of region. We will consider organized panels and individual papers.

Please email submissions (abstracts of approx. 250 words) and brief participant bios to NEASAcouncil@gmail.com by December 15, 2023. Notifications will be delivered by February 15th, 2024. For more, please visit https://newenglandasa.org.